Tag: apple inc

When Apple’s new massive campus, dubbed the Spaceship, opens for thousands of its employees next year in Cupertino, Calif., a small part of it will be powered by rows of big silver boxes containing fuel cells that generate energy through a chemical reaction.

The energy technology was developed and manufactured just a few miles away from Apple’s one-mile wide, still unfinished campus by the 15 year-old Silicon Valley company called Bloom Energy, Fortune has learned. Neither Apple nor Bloom Energy wouldn’t comment on the Cupertino fuel cell project.

The substantial project, at 4 megawatts, is a big deal for Bloom Energy, a company that’s seen major hype, a bevvy of critics, and a steady list of customers. Apple’s adoption of the energy technology is also an important endorsement of fuel cell technology, which has slowly gained some traction with a handful of global brands as an alternative to

With two Presidential candidates saying that Apple should be making more of its products in the USA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has done the sums to see just how practical it would be for Apple to manufacture iPhones in its home market.

The question, of course, isn’t a simple one: you first need to define your terms. Does it just mean assembling iPhones here rather than in China, or does it mean sourcing components from the U.S. too? The MIT analysis considered both scenarios, starting with assembly-only …

Recently departed (but still friend of the site!) Mark Gurman went on the Jay and Farhad Show this evening and gave his predictions for WWDC 2016 and beyond. Most of the conversation material was either posted previously on 9to5mac or elsewhere but there were certainly some new “whispers”… more…

Ken Segall, the former Apple ad consultant who coined the iMac name, wrote the copy for the famous ‘Think different’ campaign and authored the book Insanely Simple, says that Apple is beginning to lose touch with its heritage of simplicity. He gave his assessment of Apple’s ‘state of simplicity’ in a piece for the Guardian.

Though Apple’s customers remain fiercely loyal, the natives are getting restless. A growing number of people are sensing that Tim Cook’s Apple isn’t as simple as Steve’s Apple. They see complexity in expanding product lines, confusing product names, and the products themselves.

Apple’s falling sales coupled to strong growth from emerging Chinese brands saw the iPhone’s worldwide market share drop just over three points from 17.9% in the first quarter of 2015 to 14.8% in the same quarter this year, according to Gartner.

Although a saturated smartphone market is part of the challenge faced by Apple, global smartphone sales did continue to grow, by 3.9% to 349M units.

Now comes the news that, even if you get people to download your app, fewer than 25% of them will return to it a day after first time they use it, according to a report from Appboy, a provider of app data. Retention drops to 11% by the first week. In other words, app makers have one shot to impress new users, and the

Two years, four years, 13 years, 18 years–with bad news piling up for Apple investors, the historical analogies keep getting stretched back further and further.

Apple shares dropped to $91.85 in mid-day trading on Friday, the lowest they’ve been in nearly two years. The decline also brings the tech giants share to a level they first hit in 2012, meaning all the gains the stock has made in the past four years have been wiped out. The shares recovered a bit during the day and closed at $92.72, still down 0.6% on the day.

The most recent investor pessimism about Apple comes after it reported weaker-than-expected quarterly results last week, including its first year-over-year decline in revenue in 13 years. In fact, Apple’s shares just ended an eight consecutive day losing streak, from April 21 to May 2, that was the longest since 1998, 18 years ago.

As is becoming a tradition, Apple CEO Tim Cook stopped by the Palo Alto Apple Store close to Apple’s Campus today to meet and greet folks buying up Apple’s latest releases, the iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7. While the store wasn’t quite packed, it does appear that Cook got to meet and get some ‘facetime’ with both employees and customers.

With Apple rumored to working on sleeker versions of its 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro models in time for a possible reveal at WWDC, designer Martin Hajek has provided one possible take on how the new machines might look. His mockups essentially scale up the 12-inch MacBook design, the above image contrasting with the existing design.

The renders also incorporate a rather lovely OS X concept created by Andrew Ambrosino, the UX designer behind the standalone Apple Music app concept we showed you last year. The same duo also teamed up for a beautiful Apple TV concept.

A CNBC report claims that Apple has received more than 3.4M pre-orders for the iPhone SE through retailers in China. The report says that gold was the most popular color, accounting for 1.3M orders, with rose gold close behind at 1.2M. If the numbers are correct, adding in orders direct from Apple and in other countries could see some very impressive sales numbers …

While Apple has strongly resisted building a special ‘GovtOS’ to provide the U.S. government with access to iOS devices, it appears that Microsoft has no such qualms. TechInAsia reports that Microsoft has created a special version of Windows 10 for China, called Windows 10 Zhuangongban, which includes “more management and security controls.”

At a time when Apple has just launched its cheapest ever iPhone, and when Phil Schiller caused a few raised eyebrows over what some interpreted as an elitist remark, Apple seems to be aiming for a more egalitarian image where the Apple Watch is concerned.

Apple has quietly revamped the Apple Watch section of its website, rendering the Edition almost invisible unless you specifically go looking for it. In addition, we’re hearing reports that Apple’s most expensive Watch is also being removed from some retail store displays …

I argued a couple of months ago that ‘peak iPhone’ was likely a temporary phenomenon, but that Apple might have to be willing to accept lower margins if it is to continue to grow its sales.

I think it will also need to learn to be a little more flexible when it comes to its profit margins, especially in growth markets. That ~40% markup has served it well for a great many years, but I don’t think it can necessarily expect to maintain it indefinitely.

Yesterday, the company indicated its willingness to do just that. For the first time, Apple’s entry-level phone is a brand-new device that offers close to flagship specs at a price level close to the previous-generation phone. That will hit Apple’s margins on the device for sure, but the company is looking to the long-term …

With Apple making very clear how strongly it feels about the privacy of customer data through the FBI case, it’s no surprise that the issue is a hot-button within the company. A Reuters piece shows just how serious Apple is when it comes to guarding personal data.

Any collection of Apple customer data requires sign-off from a committee of three “privacy czars” and a top executive, according to four former employees who worked on a variety of products that went through privacy vetting […] The trio of experts […] are both admired and feared.

One former employee said that debates over whether or not customer data can be used to improve a service usually take at least a month to settle, and some privacy issues are debated for more than a year before a final decision is reached. Key privacy issues are escalated all the way to Tim Cook.

One remark Schiller made during yesterday’s launch event raised a few eyebrows. In noting that the majority of 12.9-inch iPad Pro customers had actually switched from Windows PCs, he pointed to the huge potential switchers market still out there for Apple. There are, he said, over 600 million PCs more than five years old.

What he said next generated laughter in the room, but may not have gone down quite so well with those owners.

This is really sad. It really is.

Now, he may be right. A Windows PC more than five years old is going to be creaking somewhat by now. But it seems to me that there are three types of owners of old PCs, and the remark may well offend all of them …

Apple earlier today officially took the wraps off of the oft-rumored iPhone SE. While the device is set to go up for pre-order on Thursday, March 24th and ship a week later, a handful of cases are already available for the device. While the device is largely identical to the iPhone 5/5s in terms of design, many companies are announcing new cases specifically for the latest 4-inch smartphone.

We’ve put together a roundup of some of the best choices to protect your iPhone SE below…

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found a vulnerability in iMessages that allowed them to decrypt both photos and videos sent via the service. Apple said that iOS 9 provided a partial fix – making the attack method more difficult – while it is fully fixed in iOS 9.3.

The Washington Post reports that the team advised Apple of the flaw, and will publish a paper as soon as iOS 9.3 has been officially released, expected for later today. The team has, however, explained in outline how their attack worked …

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